


Untouched paths

by Kit



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen, spoiler_song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-18
Updated: 2011-06-18
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:03:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How could a child be a weapon? Written for spoiler_song's Guns and Curls Ficathon 2011, prompt by ArtemisofEphesus. There are, in fact, spoilers for AGMGTW.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untouched paths

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArtemisofEphesus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisofEphesus/gifts).



As the door closes behind him and the old girl gathers him up, as the echoes of Demons Run and Amy's harsh breathing is lost in the push and the turn and the thrill both journey and destination, there is a moment of peace. Of sweetness. He can still feel River's eyes—that _look_ , made up of all the old and bright flecks of all the tomorrows she has already lived, fierce and sad and full of want and hope—on his face. This face. This old, bony, peculiar face that isn't even ginger.

She stood before him—her breath, her pulse, her very presence telling him that he cannot fail. That Amy and Rory—Amy! And Rory!—cannot lose too much that is precious with him, after all. _Hope,_ Korvarian had said. Well, the one-eyed wishmonger has no idea.

He knows what he must do now. It's long. It's complicated and it's long and there are probably going to be guns he can't help and explosions he can only just avoid. The running shall be glorious. Things will go _beep._

TARDIS is warm and rushing and right there, with him. She's probably been waiting for him to catch up. They stand inside each other, and he lets his hand linger over one lever—one direction. One time. “Shall we?”

They should be back, now. All of them. His Amy and Rory. River. Back, and waiting for him.

He opens the door anyway.

***

There is singing in the Gamma Forest. The swooping, six-part harmony lines that seem to come up from the ground and down from the sky all at once. The sort of singing that can leave your brain about six feet away from your spine, and your hearts somewhere below you. They sing the sky. They sing the leaves and the earth and stars, and all the people between them. Births are sung, and deaths, and battles. _Kitchens_ are sung in the Gamma Forest, if it comes to it. They don't really go in for sinks.

This song stalks around a girl. Her eyes are lowered. She is slight, and straight, her tumble of hair forced back close to her head, and dark, but her hand is in Korvarian's, and singers holding chains pace about her.

The chains hold other people. They do not sing. They have no tongues. They look to her with wide eyes, and she does not look up to meet them.

“You know what you have done,” says Korvarian. “You know, because you have said it. And because you have said it, you can say no more.”

The prisoners do not look away from the girl.

“Songless, you would be left here. Alone and small, fit only to die. But you all said something else, before your last words, did you not?” The woman smiles, inclining her head.

“You all would give yourselves, so my child might learn.”

Low noises. Desperate, back-of-the-throat noises, full of need and unfinished words. The girl looks up, then, brief and hot, and they learn for her as if for water.

“Give yourself to the cause, to her skill. She will be quick and she will be lethal. There shall be no pain. The better her aim, the sweeter your release shall be.” Korvarian steps back, leaving the child at the centre of the shifting ring.

“Fire,” she says, and the Doctor tries not to look away from a door opened too soon. Her voice is low and sad in his ear. The sadness he had seen at The Library, at Stormcage. _Spoilers, sweetie._

Too soon.

They all die. The child is a perfect weapon.

TARDIS is warm, and he is half sure he feels an apology whisper through his bones as he pushes that world away, in search of a new place to find her, and hoping the horror drips fast out of his face.


End file.
